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News

Last month, I was interviewed for a new local webseries called BackStage Vancouver, which is about people in the film industry, especially behind-the-scenes types and indies, and how they deal with the changing landscape of film and TV.

What began as a basic "explain this 'transmedia' thing to me," became something more interesting when then the host, Damien Gendron, suggested a series of follow-up interviews pairing Andrew and me with an indie producer who is putting together a new show concept. The idea was to actually see the process of Silverstring Media designing and pitching a transmedia campaign, to get a better understanding of what transmedia is, and more specifically, to see what exactly we do.

You can watch the first interview here:

So a few weeks later, with only a very basic understanding of what the producer's film project was, Andrew and I went back to meet the producer, Joe Musters, and brainstorm what we might design for him.

Andrew and I then left to put together a formal plan, pitch, and budget. For the purposes of the show, we came back with two options: a very basic, cheap one, and a bold, interesting, sky-is-the-limit one. The bare-minimum package was $2000, the deluxe was $175,000. What could Joe get for that kind of money? Watch and find out.

The main take-away?

The differences between transmedia marketing (what most people just call transmedia) and transmedia design -- also known as transmedia done right.

Everyone needs to market their content using the internet and social media these days, that's really no longer an option -- but what so many people don't get is that marketing as an entity is fundamentally changing; having a team come behind you to clean up the mess and make a campaign from the scraps is neither cost-effective nor design-effective -- in the end, unless you're going for the bare minimum, you'll quickly start to see diminishing returns by merely pumping more money into a "standard" ad campaign. If you instead decide to work with your marketing team, designing the entire package from the ground up to build its own audience and "do the marketing for you" then not only will you be getting better results, you'll also be far ahead of the pack -- who still don't understand the paradigm shift that has already occurred. It may cost a bit more up front (though certainly not anywhere near the six figure unlimited funds dream pitch we gave) but it's the better way to go.

Silverstring has three branches: our studio produces original content including games, music, and fiction; our consultancy works with clients as writers and designers to make your projects better; and our non-profit critical publishing society seeks to support the industry by publishing top-level artistic criticism and explorations.